Another Toxic Spray Campaign

California's Department of Food and Agriculture is planning yet another Toxic Spray Campaign. This time the goal is to eradicate the light brown apple moth (along with any "collateral" light brown people who happen to get in the way). (See recent article in San Jose Mercury News also see recent post on California Chronicle).

KPFA, 94.1 FM, the Pacifica Radio station in the Bay Area is broadcasting a report titled "Pushing Limits" to take a look inside the powerful grassroots movement to oppose the California Department of Food and Agriculture’s deadly plans. This program is Part 1 of a 2-part radio series co-produced and co-written by a longtime activist, distinguished poet, and personal friend, Jean Stewart.

Why did a state agency make a plan to blanket much of the state with pesticides?


The program goes behind the scenes to examine the real health impacts when airplanes aerially saturated Santa Cruz and Monterey Counties with pesticide, one year ago. It celebrates the massive public outcry that forced the state to suspend (NOT cancel) its plan to similarly spray the heavily populated Bay Area, and uncovers the truth about the state' s stealthy ongoing toxic plans.

What Can We Do to Stop Them? What Are the Dangers, if We Don’t?

People with disabilities, particularly those with multiple chemical sensitivity (MCS), asthma and respiratory diseases, and compromised immune systems, are in particular danger. Poor people & people of color, living in areas already impacted by environmental racism, face a double whammy.

Featured guests include Connie Barker of the Environmental Health Network, Max Ventura of Stop the Spray California, and Dr. Betty McGee of the Health and Environmental Resource Center in Hunters Point.

Background: Aerial Spraying in Monterey and Santa Cruz Counties in 2007

Posted on www.stopthespray.org:

Aerial spraying for the Light Brown Apple Moth (LBAM) in Monterey and Santa Cruz counties in Fall 2007 resulted in hundreds of health complaints and reports of environmental damage. The California Department of Food and Agriculture (CDFA) planned to resume and expand spraying into the larger San Francisco Bay Area.
. . .
On June 19, 2008, pressured by a groundswell of public protest, the CDFA announced the eradication campaign would no longer include aerial spraying for LBAM over populated areas. Ground treatments, as well as aerial spraying of "agricultural" and "forested" areas are still to go forward. More about LBAM eradication in CA

Over 31,000 people demand: no exposure to pesticides without consent!

Poet Jean Stewart After her reading of new poems and a story at the Redwood Gardens in Berkeley California. Benefit for Deaf Palestinians. Brilliant reading, great ASL (American Sign Language interpreters) there.